A gas turbine engine generally includes, in serial flow order, a fan section, a compressor section, a combustion section, a turbine section and an exhaust section. In operation, air enters an inlet of the compressor section where one or more axial or centrifugal compressors progressively compress the air until it reaches the combustion section. Fuel is mixed with the compressed air and burned within the combustion section to provide combustion gases. The combustion gases are routed from the combustion section through a hot gas path defined within the turbine section and then exhausted from the turbine section via the exhaust section.
In particular configurations, the turbine section includes, in serial flow order, a high pressure (HP) turbine and a low pressure (LP) turbine. The HP turbine and the LP turbine each include various rotatable turbine components such as a rotor shaft, rotor disks mounted or otherwise carried by the rotor shaft, turbine blades mounted to and radially extending from the periphery of the disks, and various stationary turbine components such as stator vanes or nozzles, turbine shrouds, and engine frames. The rotatable and stationary turbine components at least partially define the hot gas path through the turbine section. For example, the gas turbine buckets or blades generally have an airfoil shape designed to convert the thermal and kinetic energy of the flow path gases into mechanical rotation of the rotor. As the combustion gases flow through the hot gas path, thermal energy is transferred from the combustion gases to the rotatable and stationary turbine components. Such gas turbine engines are commonly employed on an aircraft.
During operation, various components of the gas turbine engine may need to be repaired and/or replaced. Oftentimes, welding is a useful technique for performing such repairs. When welding or performing other electrical-based repair on-wing, however, an electrical discharge can damage certain features of the turbine engine, e.g. roller or journal bearings, lab seals, or any other features having gaps between components.
Thus, an improved system and method for in situ (i.e. on-wing) repairing of gas turbine engines that addresses the aforementioned issues would be advantageous.